Mike: Good day to all. Today is starting out quiet for layoff announcements and the economic calendar is light, so here’s the latest news:

Mike: Bailing out these financially and ethically bankrupt institutions was a huge waste of trillions of taxpayer dollars, yet the bailouts continue to drain taxpayer funds that could be used for worthwhile causes that produce jobs. The way things have gone so far, the feds will give BOA the $4 billion, so BOA can give it back to the feds.

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.“

- Regulators contend Bank of America owes at least part of a $4 billion fee it agreed to pay in January — even without a completed legal document — because the company benefited from implied U.S. backing on about $118 billion of Merrill Lynch assets, such as mortgage-backed bonds, people familiar with the matter said. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank says it owes the Treasury nothing, according to the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations are confidential.

Bank of America, ranked first by assets and deposits in the U.S., “got a moral commitment for insurance without tendering a check, so it appears they got something for nothing,” said Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “If the government takes the risk, the government needs to be paid.”

- There have been many reports today (Friday) regarding the Thomas Weisel call for more layoffs out of Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), which was never really clear or certain if the layoffs were new or were part of an earlier round of layoffs. The 1,500 to 2,000 layoffs have been clarified to us by an external Cisco spokesperson. While it is true that the layoffs have been ongoing and while some workers might still be getting pink slips as a part of this, these layoffs are not a new development and are a part of what has already been telegraphed.

-NEW YORK — In what could be his first test in office, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg will decide whether to give beleaguered global insurer American International Group approval to pay out $2.4 million this week, and another pending $235 million in retention bonuses in coming months, to its employees.

When AIG paid $165 million in retention bonuses in March, there was widespread public outrage because the government had bailed it out with more than $180 billion in taxpayers’ money. CEO Edward Liddy appealed to employees to return at least half of those bonuses as he was given a dressing down by lawmakers at a congressional hearing. Liddy has since decided to step down.

Mike: I’m not sure why TIME belittles a Frech workers threat to blow up a plant unless a severence package is provided. Seems to me that this is a serious action contemplated by these workers and if it was US workers, TIME would call it an act of terrorism and not Protesting US Workers Do the Darndest Things. No wonder TIME magazine sales are in the trash:

In the latest episode of Protesting French Workers Do the Darndest Things, laid-off employees at the New Fabris car parts factory have come up with a novel method of negotiating their severance pay. Either they’re given $41,000 per employee as part of the company’s closure, they warn, or they’ll blow the entire plant to smithereens.

-—The Nolanville City Council voted Monday morning to cut six jobs, including three patrol officer positions, in order to keep the community afloat, but Nolanville’s accountant told council members more cuts will need to be made in order to continue paying the bills.

- As the negotiations continue in Springfield, Progress Illinois plans to track the ongoing fallout statewide. But we need your help. If you hear of further cuts and layoffs by social services agencies — either directly or via news reports — please send that information to contact@progressillinois.com so that we can add it to our list.

Below is a map of the affected organizations we’ve identified so far, followed by the full list. (Click here to explore a larger version of the map.)

- Casting doubt on the future of one of the Bay Area’s largest manufacturing employers, Toyota Motor said Friday that it may end production at the giant NUMMI auto plant in Fremont, now that longtime partner General Motors has decided to abandon the joint venture that runs the facility.

The decision threatens 4,700 jobs at the 5.3-million-square-foot factory, as well as numerous parts suppliers and millions of dollars a year in payrolls around the Bay Area. The plant is also a significant contributor to the city of Fremont’s budget, paying $1.9 million in property taxes and $280,000 in other taxes, according to the city’s finance director.

- Tom Kane, shop steward for Teamsters Local 115, said 100 of his members at the three plants would lose their jobs. Twenty nonunion employees would be affected as well, according to the company filing.

- Finland-based Ahlstrom Corp., which operates a major plant in Windsor Locks, is closing one Italian plant and shutting down a production line in a second plant. The move will result in the elimination of 48 jobs, company officials said in an announcement on the company Web site last week.

- After two months of silence, sparks will fly again Monday at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Arlington.

The Arlington plant’s parking lot was empty after General Motors closed 13 of its North American factories for 60 days starting in May, one of the longest shutdowns outside of a strike. Workers will resume production of SUVs in Arlington on Monday.

The factory’s 2,400 workers will come to work for the first time since May 18, welding and bolting together Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade SUVs.

- www.UnitedWeWork.org is a nationwide recruiting service designed to stimulate hiring in America by connecting job seekers and employers without any recruiting fees whatsoever. Any job seeker can join and be hired for free. Any employer can easily find, contact and hire any job seeker without cost. United We Work is provided through AllianceQ, and principal partners include 7-Eleven, ADP, Allstate, AT&T, Hewitt, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, Office Depot, Sears Holdings, and Starbucks. United We Work is powered by QuietAgent, a next-generation job matching network. For more information or to join visit www.UnitedWeWork.org

- Among the 50 largest cities in the U.S., one stands out for having the most abundant job postings per capita: Washington, D.C. The nation’s capital boasted 133 postings per 1,000 residents in the second quarter of 2009, according to a report by Indeed.com, a broad job search engine that combs company and association websites, job boards, newspapers, and blogs for postings. That Washington took the top spot is no great surprise, as government hiring has held up during the recession.

The runner up is Baltimore, Md., which is aided by its close proximity to Washington, but also boasts an economy fueled by recession-hearty industries like healthcare and higher education. Baltimore’s unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in May, well below the 9.4 percent national average that month.

Mike: Good day to all. The hopeful glow produced by dreamy stimulus predictions of immediate job growth and recession’s end is fading into the hangover of reality. The punch bowl has been emptied, the lights have been brightened and it’s time to stagger out the door to the sunlight and face the music.

This economic problem was at least 10 years in the making, so the cure is going to take longer than six months, but most Americans want immediate gratification, such as they had during the NAQDAQ and housing bubbles. Purging the excesses from this fractured financial system is going to take years, not months. I’ll post some reasons why this stimulus is going to be short on results when I have time later this day, but here is an excellent read in the meantime:

Administration officials say a job market recovery usually lags behind the economic recovery itself. Indeed, most forecasters had predicted that unemployment was likely to keep rising through the end of 2009 and would not start to edge down until 2010.

“People know that problems of this seriousness cannot be turned around in six months or nine months,” Mr. Summers said. “One of the president’s strengths is his extraordinary candor. The president has been honest with the American people about the enormity of the challenge and the amount of time it will take to turn things around.”

But political pressures may not give the administration two years to show that its plan is working, especially if Democrats in Congress begin to conclude that continued bad economic news is putting them at risk of losing seats in the 2010 midterm elections.

The index of consumer expectations fell to 60.9 from June’s final reading of 69.2.

The index of current economic conditions slipped to 70.4 from June’s final reading of 73.2.

“Consumers concluded that the economic downturn would last longer and their personal finances would not recover as quickly as they had previously expected,” the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said in a statement.

- As noted in Continuing Claims Soar by 159,000 to New Record the record continuing claims number is dramatically understated by over 2.5 million. Charts of what is really happening are shown below but first let’s recap the data as reported by the Department of Labor.

- After its bonus payments ignited a firestorm of criticism earlier this year, American International Group Inc. is asking the federal government to weigh in on the insurer’s plan to resume paying millions in promised retention incentives next week, according to media reports….

- Employment fell by 7,400, while economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted a drop of 35,000. The unemployment rate also rose less than expected, to 8.6 percent from 8.4 percent in May, the highest since February 1998, Statistics Canada said today. Economists predicted the jobless rate would be 8.7 percent.

The report is the fourth this week to suggest a recession that began at the end of last year is easing. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney have said the job market would continue to worsen this year because companies are reluctant to expand again.

- BEIJING (AP) — China’s exports and imports fell again in June but declines were less severe than in May, data showed Friday, adding to signs the world’s third-largest economy is recovering from its slump.

Exports fell 21.4 percent in June from a year earlier, the government’s Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Chinese customs agency. That was an improvement over May’s record 26.4 percent decline.

China’s trade collapsed in late 2008 as the global consumer demand plunged, wiping out millions of factory jobs. Analysts say a full-fledged recovery will have to wait until China’s key U.S. and European export markets rebound.

“Overseas demand still hasn’t recovered yet,” said Hu Xiaoyue, an economist at Shanghai Securities. “The role of exports in economic growth will continue to weaken.”

Mike: NY’s dysfunctional senate finally returned to work after a month of bickering, but the dysfunction remains.

- On July 9, the other Democrat—Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. (D-Bronx)–announced that he was leaving the Republican voting bloc. Espada was appointed Senate majority leader, the second-most-powerful person in the chamber.

- Santa Cruz County this week sent out layoff notices to 50 employees.

The bulk of the notices are headed to personnel in the county’s Health Services Agency and Human Services Department, which administers the region’s state-required safety net for the sick, poor and elderly.

- New York-based OSI Pharmaceuticals, a developer of oncology products, said this week that it is planning to shut its Boulder, Colorado operations later this year, as it consolidates its operations into a location in Westchester County, New York. The firm, which is also closing two facilities elsewhere in New York, plus an operation in New Jersey, said that approximately 350 employees will be affected across its four locations.

- FALL RIVER – Silver Line Building Products LLC is ending manufacturing at its 200,000-square-foot factory in Fall River today, laying off 287 workers and leaving in place only a few dozen office staffers, The Herald News reported today.

- West Penn Allegheny Health System is eliminating 185 full-time positions across all of its hospitals as well as in corporate services, officials at the region’s second largest hospital network said Thursday.

- The Tennessean today has eliminated the jobs of six editorial employees and 25 other staffers. Bob Faricy, vice president of market development for the newspaper, confirmed the numbers late this afternoon.

- Harvey Hill, publisher and owner of the paper, told employees Thursday afternoon that he would file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy today. Employees were told to turn in their keys at the end of their shift Thursday.

- Officials from Ameritas, the insurance company headquartered in Lincoln, announced Wednesday that three positions will be cut from the Lincoln office, part of 21 job cuts nationally at Ameritas and its affiliated Unifi Cos.

- International Game Technology, the world’s largest slot machine producer, will lay off 55 more workers at its Reno headquarters this week as it continues to adjust during the recession, a company spokesman said Thursday.

- Advanta will have fewer than 200 employees after the reduction, which will affect all departments and result in expenses of $8.5 million to $9.5 million, the Spring House, Pennsylvania-based company said today in a regulatory filing.

- However, the college announced they were to cut 12 full time posts just before the semester ended. Loss of the 12 full time equivalent posts which are under threat, would mean 17 staff losing their jobs

- More than 50 staff at Infoteam International Services Ltd’s Plympton call centre have been told to expect redundancies because a firm, which has not been named, wants to move ‘certain functions’ to a cheaper alternative.

- About fifty workers at a Stonehouse engineering factory have been told today that they are being made redundant.

via

Stonehouse, Gloucestershire firm sheds more jobs.-

- MEXICO CITY, July 10 (Reuters) – General Motors Mexico will slash 300 more jobs as it reels from a sharp decline in U.S. and Mexican demand, but the U.S. automaker’s local head said the company did not expect further plant shutdowns.

- Austrian car interiors maker Eybl will cut 230 jobs at all of its four Hungarian plants, the German vehicle upholstery maker announced. Eybl Hungária is currently under liquidation and will also move to single-shift production.

Mike: Today’s Jobless Claims report shows a marked improvement from last week, but those improvements may have been a result of seasonal distortions in the auto sector. Might as well enjoy that bit of good news, but with continuing claims reaching another record at 6.883 million, any celebration is likely to be muted. More on these numbers later…………….

WASHINGTON, July 9 (Reuters) – The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week but the data was distorted by an unusual pattern of layoffs in the automotive industry, which amplified the decline.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that initial claims for state unemployment insurance fell 52,000, the largest drop since December, to a much lower-than-expected seasonally adjusted 565,000 in the week ended July 4, from 617,000 the prior week.

It was the lowest reading since January. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims to drop to 605,000 from a previously reported 614,000.

However, in a sign of ongoing employment weakness, so-called continued claims of people still on jobless aid after an initial week of benefits rose by 159,000 to a record 6.883 million in the week ending June 27, the latest for which data is available.

- ARMONK, N.Y. — Though IBM is notoriously tight-lipped about its layoffs, many reports suggest that Big Blue has chopped as many as 10,000 workers so far in 2009. Earlier this year the tech giant caused a stir when it was also widely reported that many of these jobs might actually be shipped to other countries such as India. If recent activity is any indication, India appears to have become a strong focal point for the company.

Mike: The following story illustrates how the billions spent on mismanaged, bankrupt auto companies will likely lead to the taxpayer having to pay millions more to clean up their environmental disasters. What has been the personal cost to these auto execs? Nothing. Most of the auto execs and Boards of Directors of bankrupt auto cos are still employed and making outrageous salaries, but their terrible decisions through the past 40 years will leave the taxpayer with economic and environmental scars that will last for decades to come:

- “It’s going to be very difficult to sell or dispose of them,” GM restructuring chief Albert Koch told the judge in charge of the carmaker’s bankruptcy on July 1. GM estimates the plants’ environmental liabilities at $530 million, he said.

One property the Detroit-based carmaker is ditching is a foundry in Massena, New York, bordered by the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation and the St. Lawrence River. Built to make aluminum cylinder heads for the Chevrolet Corvair in the 1950s, it generated PCB sludge and waste from hydraulic fluids.

$225 Million Cleanup

It would have cost GM an estimated $225 million to clean up the site and restock the river with edible fish if it held on to the property, said John Privitera, a lawyer for the tribe at McNamee Lochner Titus & Williams PC in Albany, New York. Now GM creditors or the state will get stuck with the costs because bankruptcy law permits shedding such obligations.

Mike: The retails numbers are quite lousy and much of that is blamed on the rainy weather. When I was growing up, it used to be that people would go shopping because the weather was lousy, so I don’t know how much of this poor retail sales figure should be attributed to rain. People shop from late November through Christmas and that’s about the lousiest weather of the year, yet sales are at their highest level. Many people are seeing hundreds of thousands lose their jobs each month, so I would think that’s more of a drag on sales than a few showers.

- The nation’s retailers were already reeling from the new consumer frugality but in June, incessant rain and rising unemployment further dampened sales. Stores that had made strides in recent months reverted to double-digit declines.

Overall, the industry posted a 6.7 percent decline in sales for the month, in contrast to a 3.9 percent increase a year ago, according to the Goldman Sachs Retail Composite Index. Wal-Mart, which had been a bright spot in the retailing world and helped lift the overall industry number, is no longer reporting monthly sales. Retailers are also facing challenging year-over-year sales comparisons because this June there were no tax rebate checks to help bolster shopping.

Mike: I prefer the way some British present the facts, since they don’t do the gloss-over that most US “experts” seem to present. The US megaphone is that the stimulus will create enough jobs to stop employment losses and that companies that are receiving million and even billions in taxpayer money will use that cash to create millions of jobs, instead of continuing to off-shore hundreds of thousands of jobs. UK also had a large stimulus package of about $38 billion, which while smaller per person than that of the US stimulus is still a rather large package, but it doesn’t seem to be creating the jobs expected. Maybe the US stimulus package will create those promised jobs, but it’s not going to happen quickly enough for the American public.

- Britain’s jobs market is continuing to deteriorate as demand weakens across all sectors, the UK’s largest recruitment firm Hays has warned.

It said demand for jobs had fallen further across both the permanent and temporary sectors after a tough past three months.

The group has had to close 15 UK & Ireland offices and slash its own workforce by another 5% in the quarter to June 30, bringing the headcount reduction for the full year to 26%.

Hays said it had seen some signs of stabilisation in the City recruitment market as big banks cherry-pick the best teams after the recent slew of redundancies seen in the financial crisis.

- The Government Accountability Office, finds that the $787 billion stimulus package is being used to “cushion” state budgets, prevent teacher layoffs, make more Medicaid payments and head off other fiscal problems.

- -WASHINGTON — U.S. engineering unemployment soared to a record in the second quarter of 2009, nearly doubling on a quarterly basis to 8.6 percent, the IEEE-USA said Tuesday (July 7), citing government figures.

The previous quarterly record for joblessness among U.S. electrical and electronic engineers was 7 percent, reached in October 2003.

- Dr. Hugo Ferlito lost his position as clinical director after serving in that capacity for 21 months. That position was one of six eliminated July 1 when Dientes reduced staffing from 38 to 32 employees in response to the state’s elimination of dental services for adult Medi-Cal beneficiaries statewide, including nearly 19,000 in Santa Cruz County.

Mike: OK, so the feds are “talking” about a health care plan that is likely to be a watered down corporate giveaway that lacks any kind of universal component and this hospital is blaming those “talks” for its layoffs! Talk about the hospital (and the reporter) putting the death spin on “health care for all” BEFORE the legislation is even presented is amazing. The PR types at this hospital are getting a jump start on the “health care for all kills jobs and corporate profits” train. Other hospitals are likely to follow this job scare routine to make sure that heath care for all is DOA in the US senate. Congress will do its usual shuffle and universal health care will die at the drawing board because the corporate powers of the large health insurers, pharmaceuticals and hospitals will put the “we won’t contribute to your campaign” fear into the ears of a pathetic, spineless congress.

- AUGUSTA, Ga. – A new proposedgovernment health care plan is one of the reasons University Hospital has laid off 30 employees.

- At least 20 journalists were laid off Wednesday at The Arizona Republic in the latest round of job cuts issued by the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett Co. Inc., sources close to the paper confirmed.

- NEW ORLEANS – UNO will eliminate nine senior administration positions, including two vice chancellors and two dean positions and will not fill 20 vacant faculty positions as they meet the reduced budget allocated to them by the state this year.

- BUDAPEST, July 9 (Reuters) – Japanese car parts supplier Denso Corp will lay off up to 800 workers at its Hungarian plant by the end of September, national news agency MTI reported on Thursday, citing the company.

-Approximately 80 employees will be laid off. Michelin is providing severance packages for the employees and is working with the employees to help them make a transition, said Tate Hoxworth, Michelin spokesman said.